I don’t have anything made by BLI but for years I have followed posts about their newly issued products and been amazed at how many issues they seem to have with running and electrical problems.
Am I imagining this or do they have some serious design/manufacturing defects?
I never seem to hear all these issues about Atlas, Athearn, Roco or Rapido stuff.
Recently the Rapido Royal Hudson seems to have some overheating issue but that’s all I’ve heard about them.
What is the problem that BLI has making something reliable and of quality?
oldline1
No one really knows what the exact failure rate of Broadway products is except, perhaps, Broadway Limited.
I’m guessing that one of the reasons there is a “percieved” high failure rate is that often, the only time you hear about a particular locomotive is when there is some kind of issue the owner is having and they come here seeking help. Most posters aren’t going to begin a thread saying, “I just ran so-and-so locomotive and everything was fine” nothing to report here.
Broadway Limited has been in business for eighteen years — they must be doing something right. Additionally, in that eighteen years the sheer volume of the locomotives and rolling stock produced has to be some bretty big numbers.
Reflecting my own experiences, I have a roster of just over sixty BLI locomotives. Out of those I have had two steam locomotives with cracked driver gears, One with a bad chuff sensor reed switch, one which burned out a smoke generating unit even though it was switched off and, recently, two Paragon 3 decoders that had “scrambled” their brains.
So about a 10% “failure” rate. In all the above cases BLI took care of making repairs or sending parts, even for the two cracked gear locomotives which were years out of warranty. My only cost was postage for the two locomotives that actually had to be returned for repair.
Broadway, in my opinion, has taken some initiative in manufacturing some unique locomotives that probably required some specialized design criteria, such as the Baldwin Centipede. Most of my BLI locomotives are over ten years old and are still running strong, even my very first NYC hudson, BLI item No. 001.
Personally, I’m thankful for BLI and their business model. Sure they have had some QC issues. Perhaps some
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I just received a “New Old Stock” Atlas/Roco S1 switcher from an ebay seller.
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I just ran the locomotive and everything was fine, so there is nothing to report here.
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-Kevin
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I’m not sure that’s accurate as I’ve seen a lot of posts where folks buy something and want to brag about the item and promote it.
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I would think the opposite would be true that in a smaller hand-built industry the chance of higher quality control would be greater.
oldline1
Considering that the locomotive is diecast and weigs as much as a brick, the pulling power is quite poor. The one that I just got has trouble pulling 8 cars on level track. The leading and trailing trucks appear to be oversprung. Time to get out the Bullfrog Snot.
That’s the problem I had with my BLI Dreyfuss 4-6-4. The trucks were so heavily sprung that the drive wheels could barely touch the track. Reducing the spring tension helped a LOT.
My three P5A’s arrived last week. I set the long address to the road number and tested them. They are picky with electrical pickup. The wheels need to be cleaned of whatever they end up with in manufacturing. The three I have easily pulled a 70 car ore trains of Stewart/Bowser jennies up a 1% grade. I did have to repair one Atlas code 83 turnout on a crossover which was not passing power on all rails. Once that was done no issues. Mine ran fine through my one reversing section coming out of my Harrisburg staging and between different boosters. I use NCE and they advance consisted with no problems so I am happy with mine. I hope they do the modifieds in the near future . — Ken
I ordered and received a 3rd BLI P5a, and it acted the same as the first two. I couldn’t believe that three BLI’s would fail in a row, and that I had to be missing something;d simple. So I re-addressed the throttle to 3 with the loco on the track - and everything worked as normal. So even though I could place an Atlas, Athearn or Rapido on the track and they’d run with the throttle already addressed to 3, the BLI wouldn’t respond until I addressed the throttle to 3 with it sitting on the track. we live, we learn. So I called the on-line vendor I’d returned the first two units to and told them, so that they didn’t waste time diagnosing them. They said that they’d not run into that issue before either, and that they really appreciated the heads-up. I’m happy to report that the P5a looks and runs great, and is a fairly decent puller.
Somehow you or your system are/is failing to set CV29 to a value that enables the long address, or you’re not removing power from the tracks before acquiring the new address…? Is that possible? If it operates on Add 03, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not enabling the new address, and I believe it’s a misconfiguration of CV29.
I suppose another possibility is that all Paragon decoders for this issue are defective.
I have had the Pickup issues with my P5a, cleaned wheels, cleaned track. Still the locomotive would stop and start on it’s own schedule. Today I closely checked both front and rear truck pickps and found a severed wire to the contacts. The was only enough slack in the wire to attach to the truck with the spring fully compressed. which is why it seperated when the spring expanded. I added a small section of flexible wire with shrink tubing and re solderd the wire to the contact. One run areound the layout and it shorted in my hidden loop. at this point I was ready to send it back to BLI (broadway boomerang). I some how gained my patience back and closely checked the front and rear truck contacts which were really loose. Then it dawned on me (400w lightbulb in the head) when I removed the locomotive from the box two little derlin plates fell out. I thought at the time that they were for shipping security only. Thank god I held on to those plates! I took them out of the box,each plate had two locking tabs and four alinement holes. I snapped them in place over the truck contacts and ran the locomotive. To my surprise it ran like a Jewel no stopping or hesitation. Look for those two little plates! I have no traction issues with the engine. My ruling grade is 1.5%. I hope this helps someone.